The term “technocracy” is nothing new to our political lexicon. It’s been around for decades and is commonly associated with totalitarian leftist regimes who appoint technical elitist “experts” to manage specialized sectors of their regime’s military, economy, and other civil sectors. A technocracy’s effect is to nullify the will of the people.
The first of such modern regimes was arguably the National Socialist German Workers Party (aka the Nazi Party). Minister of Armaments Albert Speer was among Hitler’s finest and most prized technocrats. In recent years, Speer’s role has been overshadowed by diabolical agents with more obvious blood on their hands, such as Adolf Eichman, Rudolph Hess, Hermann Goering, and others.
However, Speer was central to Hitler’s vision for Germany. He laid out grandiose architectural plans for the Third Reich’s capital and kept the bulk of the German armaments machine running, even as the lights dimmed around Hitler’s failed vision of a thousand-year reign of unopposed power. He was no less diabolical than his peers.
Since WWII, people have pondered and debated how it was possible for Germans, considered among the world’s most cultured and educated people, to fall in line with the Nazi agenda. After the war, Speer offered insights that are also warnings to Democrats’ technocratic aspirations.
When Germany surrendered, Speer was brought to the ancient German city of Nuremberg, where he was put on trial for crimes against humanity along with twenty-four others. After much deliberation between the tribunal, he was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment at Spandau prison in Berlin. It was a slap on the wrist sentence compared to other regime members who stood trial and received death sentences.
When Speer’s trial neared its conclusion, his final testimony included information explaining how the Nazi regime effectively won the hearts and minds of the bulk of the German population after the nation’s economic and cultural decline following WWI. He also issued a stern warning to the victorious democratic nations that were already building large bureaucratic departments that were overseen by the proto-technocrats of their day.
(Keep in mind that America had a head start on this project: During the 1930s, Roosevelt’s New Deal transformed the American federal government by adding nearly seventy megalithic bureaucracies to the Federal government, permanently transforming America’s governing system. This transformation began the process of convincing many well-meaning Americans that “the bigger the government, the better,” and conditioned Americans to embrace large bureaucratic agencies run by technocrats.)
Speer spoke the following:
Hitler’s dictatorship was the first dictatorship of an industrial state in this age of modern technology, a dictatorship which employed to perfection the instruments of technology to dominate its own people…
By means of such instruments of technology as the radio and public-address systems, eighty million persons could be made subject to the will of one individual. Telephone, teletype, and radio made it possible to transmit the commands of the highest levels directly to the lowest organs where because of their high authority they were executed uncritically.
Thus, many offices and squads received their evil commands in this direct manner. The instruments of technology made it possible to maintain a close watch over all citizens and to keep criminal operations shrouded in a high degree of secrecy.
To the outsider this state apparatus may look like the seemingly wild tangle of cables in a telephone exchange; but like such an exchange it could be directed by a single will. Dictatorships of the past needed assistants of high quality in the lower ranks of the leadership also-men who could think and act independently.
The authoritarian system in the age of technology can do without such men. The means of communication alone enable it to mechanize the work of the lower leadership. Thus, the type of uncritical receiver of orders is created.
Speer explained that, while Hitler was the first to employ the tools of authoritarian control to carry out his regime’s crimes, as technology developed after the war, other technocratic dictatorships would pose an even greater threat to humanity:
The more technological the world becomes, the greater is the danger…As the former minister in charge of a highly developed armaments economy it is my last duty to state: Every country in the world may be dominated by technology; but in a modern dictatorship this seems to me to be unavoidable. Therefore, the more technological the world becomes, the more essential will be the demand for individual freedom and the self-awareness of the individual human being as a counterpoise to technology.
In 2023, America is witnessing an ever-encroaching government composed of unelected and unrestricted technocrats who are increasingly running, or perhaps, ruining, ordinary Americans’ lives. Therefore, it pays to take a lesson from one of history’s most evil technocratic regimes and its chief architect.
Speers’ words from his final testimony should chill any reader who favors a free society. We already see how the dozens of huge bureaucracies routinely roll over Americans’ constitutional rights, imposing their collective wills upon the people without regard to our ostensibly representational government.
Moreover, this rogue bureaucracy is allied with Big Tech’s spiderweb. Both big tech and the Deep State are composed of radical leftist ideological factions who believe in their absolute right to censor any view or opinion that runs contrary to a far-left narrative. No wonder, then, that we are witnessing a government, press corps, and common culture run amok with the Marxist-Woke mind virus.
The big question is whether there are enough freedom-loving Americans left to defeat this anti-freedom system of governing. After all, the bureaucratic state about which the evil Speer warned has already successfully entrenched itself into the fabric of the American way of life.
It’s urgent that Americans understand that their liberties are being held hostage by technocratic elites. They must immediately begin the process of reclaiming their ancient rights before it’s too late. That means using all legal means possible to oppose the government and technological alliance that works to subvert the will of We, the People, America’s true rulers.
(OK: WAY TOO LONG FOR A QUICK READ, BUT it is time to acknowledge what we are really dealing with and what you want your future and that of your loved ones to be.)
Propaganda-In-Action: How The Media Minimizes mRNA Vaccine Injuries
Propaganda is the Technocrat way of sowing confusion and doubt about what otherwise is self-evident reality. Some people call this “gaslighting”. Whatever you are seeing with your own eyes is miss-interpreted or miss-represented and therefore you should accept the propaganda as being true. This is blatant fraud, but people fall for it time after time, giving the reason why propaganda continues to be sprayed from a firehose. ⁃ TN Editor
I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had… Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What are relevant are reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.
– MICHAEL CRICHTON, LECTURE AT THE CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, PASADENA, CALIFORNIA, JANUARY 17, 2003. (1)
Within a few months of the SARS-Cov-2 vaccines being injected into millions of people, numerous types of adverse reactions were reported throughout the world. Information about adverse events became an object of intense denial and obfuscation by government agencies and state-funded and corporate-sponsored media, whether the information was in the form of rumors, amateur speculation, or serious scientific inquiry by qualified academics.
However, in 2023, government registries of vaccine injuries now reveal serious deficiencies of the vaccines designed to combat SARS-Cov-2. In a report published in the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research, the authors analyzed data from regulatory surveillance and self-reporting systems in Germany, Israel, Scotland, the United Kingdom, and the United States “to find long-term adverse events of the COVID products that cannot be captured during the expedited safety analyses.” This extract from the abstract goes on to state:
Our data show, among other trends, increases in adverse event reports if we compare COVID products to influenza and pertussis vaccines and statistically significant higher numbers of hospital encounters in military personnel, as well as increases in incidences of thromboembolic conditions, such as menstrual abnormalities, myocarditis, and cerebrovascular events after the implementation of COVID injection mandates, compared to the preceding five years… Our meta-analysis of both national and international vaccine adverse events emphasizes the importance of re-evaluating public health policies that promote universal mass injection and multiple boosters for all demographic groups. In combination with informal reports from reliable witnesses, limitations of the safety trials, and the decreased lethality of new strains, our research demonstrates that the cost (both monetary and humanitarian) of injecting healthy people, and especially children, outweighs any claimed though unvalidated benefits. (2)
In this late phase of the event that started in 2020, governments and their various propaganda platforms cannot hide these adverse events and are now engaged perhaps in what can be called the “cooling the mark out” phase of the pandemic. An article in The New Yorker in 2015 discussed this sociological phenomenon (3). The term was used in a 1952 study by Erving Goffman to describe an important element of con artistry, but it also describes generally any social mechanism that is needed to help people adjust to material losses and humiliation. When a victim is forced to acknowledge he has been conned or ripped off, the perpetrators have to make some effort to help him adjust. Otherwise, he may do something “irrational” such as pursuing violent revenge, media exposure, criminal charges, or a lawsuit. He needs to be reminded that he still has precious things he could lose, so he has to just accept the loss and humiliation and go back to his wife and children. Governments are doing the same now: “Yes, there have been some rare adverse events. Get in line and fill out this form to apply for your legally entitled compensation. We will be with you shortly.”
Some of the adverse events are mild reactions such as fainting, dizziness, fatigue, and flu-like malaise lasting a few days—just like the viral infection itself, ironically enough. People under age seventy who had a 99.9% chance of recovering quickly from the infection chose instead to suffer this malaise, going along with the social coercion and accepting the unknown risks of vaccination (4). As if it were a scheduled elective surgery, they were simply choosing the timing of when they were going to feel horrible—i.e. “I should get this over with now before my vacation.”
The less mild reactions are myocardial infarction, myocarditis, pericarditis, tachycardia, stroke, blood clots (embolism), aneurysm, tinnitus, Bell’s Palsy, Guillain-Barré Syndrome, transverse myelitis, cancer, heavy bleeding, menstrual irregularities, miscarriage, neurological symptoms, immune system disorders, skin rash, intense pain and numbness, memory loss, “brain fog,” and “inexplicable” sudden death. These conditions can be transitory or, like the last one on the list, permanent.
One can easily find peer-reviewed research papers that confirm the increased rates of these adverse health events after vaccination, yet a curious thing about them is that they often end very tentatively, including a phrase such as the one found in the extract below:
The number of reported cases is relatively very small in relation to the hundreds of millions of vaccinations that have occurred, and the protective benefits offered by COVID-19 vaccination far outweigh the risks. (5)
This tendency was also found in the recent Cochrane review on the efficacy of wearing masks (6). Instead of stating emphatically that in numerous studies there is no evidence to show a benefit in wearing masks, the authors concluded by stating all the ways that the studies they reviewed might contain some undiscovered flaws. It was like they were afraid of having made an important discovery that should change government policy.
Minimization, Exaggeration, Diversion and Distraction in Mass Media and Scientific Journals
Example 1: Putting a Positive Spin on Vaccine-Induced Cancer
Another such example, this one in the popular press, was the story told about the immunologist Dr. Michel Goldman in The Atlantic in September 2022 (7). As an advocate of many vaccines during his career, and in particular as a believer in the salutary effects of the mRNA vaccines, he was confronted with the images on a CT scan that showed lymphatic cancer spreading aggressively in his body soon after his mRNA shots, both after the first two shots and then again after a booster shot a few months later. The cancer connection to the shots was hard to deny because the aggressive growth was extremely rare and also because the first shots were in the left arm and the cancer appeared on the left armpit. The booster was injected in the right arm, then the cancer appeared on the right side.
If the subject matter were not so dark, the article would appear to be a satire of people who can’t think logically or change their views when confronted with new facts. The author, Roxanne Khamsi, goes to extreme lengths to describe the struggle she had to write the story in a way that would not lend support to those who spread “anti-vaccine disinformation.” Dr. Goldman was just as determined, willing to see himself as one of the rare unfortunate ones who must suffer so that so many others may be saved by these supposedly miraculous new drugs.
As Piers Robinson’s lessons on propaganda have taught us, the propagandist doesn’t lie directly. Propaganda operates through exaggeration, omission, incentivization and coercion, and these are in evidence in The Atlantic, in this article, and in all of its coverage of the pandemic (8). Roxanne Khamsi selectively focuses on the most hyperbolic reactions from the “fearmongers [who] have made the problem worse by citing scary-sounding data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System… with insufficient context.” She also had to mention that a vaccination center was set ablaze in Poland. Nowhere in the long article is there any mention of less radical reactions such as the hundreds of scientific papers describing adverse events—studies written by non-fearmongering sober-minded scientists. Such exaggeration and omission move the reader toward an acceptance of the necessity of mass vaccination.
Another facet of this propaganda is its use of what could be called “The New Yorker” genre of journalism. It is a “long read” piece (4,000 words) of narrative storytelling that uses the methods of fictional literature. It dramatizes the story arc of one individual, going deep into his biographical details, thoughts, and feelings. This is the genre that is natural and expected by the educated professional class of people who wake up on Sunday mornings and look for something serious to read, something that will make them feel smart before going back to the grind the next day. It is also a genre used by documentary filmmakers. They may have an important social problem to expose, but they have to find a person at the center of it and tell a story. Otherwise, the audience will tune out. The TED talks tell us it is hardwired in our brains. Humans are storytellers.
The New Yorker genre makes the educated class feel informed and serious: 4,000 words, a deep read, not the superficial stuff that the deplorables read in the New York Post! The length of the piece makes it likely that readers won’t be using their time to read anything else. Most importantly, the use of this genre diverts attention away from the need for an objective understanding of a phenomenon that involves billions of victims. The writer and the subject, Dr. Goldman, say much about the need to understand the science and not inflame radical reactions from the so-called low-information types, but this genre is itself un-scientific, subjective, sentimental, and narrow in its scope.
The most stunning omission in the article is that neither the author nor Dr. Goldman makes the obvious logical conclusion that, considering both the apparent and the still unknown risks, mandatory or coerced vaccination is unethical, especially for a viral infection that 99.9% of people under age seventy can survive. After learning of what happened to Dr. Goldberg, persons in good health, if not propagandized to think otherwise, would logically decide in favor of taking their chances with an infection that will pass in a few days. This is especially true for people who, unlike Dr. Goldman, don’t have a brother who is head of nuclear medicine at a university hospital and may not have timely access to the high quality of health care that Dr. Goldman had.
The article concludes thus:
And as a longtime immunologist and medical innovator, he’s still considering the question of whether a vaccine that is saving tens of millions of lives each year might have put his own in jeopardy. He remains adamant that COVID-19 vaccines are necessary and useful for the vast majority of people.
Many would disagree and say that the vaccines are, at best, only for the non-vast minority of high-risk individuals who accept them with informed consent. Despite his own experience of suffering vaccine-induced aggressive lymphoma, Dr. Goldman believes that a vast majority of people should subject themselves to the risk of suffering the same fate. In September 2022, the time of publication, it had been officially acknowledged that the mRNA shots had not stopped the spread of the virus, had not induced lasting immunity, and may not have lowered the fatality rate of the illness. Other possible explanations:
(1) The virus harmed most of the vulnerable population before the vaccines arrived.
(2) Doctors learned how to treat the disease without resorting to deadly practices such as delayed treatment, ventilators and Remdesivir.
(3) The virus evolved into less deadly variants.
The purported benefits of the vaccines remain unprovable, and explanations (1)-(3) remain as matters of controversy.
Example 2: The Feint After Post-Vaccination Fainting
Other examples of this genre applied to the Covid-19 event are plentiful and easy to find in the media that have been funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation or sponsored by Pfizer and other hidden hands. I will describe just one more that shows that it was still being used in April 2023, three years on as the official narrative becomes untenable.
On April 10th, 2023, NBC News published a 3,400-word piece on the “fainting nurse” social media frenzy that occurred in December 2020 when frontline healthcare workers in the US started to receive the mRNA shots (9). The vaccination of nurse Tiffany Dover was recorded by a local television news crew because it was the big day when the savior vaccines had arrived to supposedly end the pandemic. Unfortunately, the cameras recorded her fainting shortly after receiving her injection.
The article describes how “conspiracy theorists” created an episode of “participatory misinformation” as they circulated her story on social media, exaggerated what the fainting meant, spread rumors of her death, and engaged in a campaign of harassment (a.k.a. doxing) (10). Tiffany remained steadfastly supportive of the vaccination program and believed that her fainting was inconsequential, yet she was traumatized by the doxing and chose to remain silent for two full years. Unfortunately, this choice only intensified the rumors of her death or of her enforced silence.
My critique of this article includes no support for the people who engage in doxing and wild speculation. My criticism is that this genre of journalism consistently associates all disagreement with the official narratives as the work of wild-eyed, deplorable bullies. It consistently ignores the hundreds of scientists who are publishing peer-reviewed articles on vaccine injuries and questioning the abandonment of standard public health policy that started in 2020.
Brandy Zadrozny, the author of this article about Tiffany Dover, felt it was necessary to associate Tiffany’s story with other instances of unhinged conspiracy theory such as the 2020 election being stolen from Donald Trump and the denial of the murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Thus, the very intentional implication here is that if you are concerned about the accumulation of medical journal articles describing a long list of vaccine-related injuries, think twice. You don’t want to be dismissed as one of those cruel and deranged fools who have lost touch with reality. Your family, friends and colleagues are all being trained to ostracize you for wrongthink, so forget about it. You are the mark that needs to be cooled out.
Instead of treating the “participatory misinformation” campaign as a problem of the deplorables that the righteous must struggle to solve, the writers of such articles could start to wonder if there is some legitimate anger driving such regrettable phenomena. There were very sound reasons to worry about a pharmaceutical product being rushed to market in less than a year, especially one that was based on a novel biotechnology. Additionally, fainting, after all, is not always a minor incident, and it is rational to be concerned about it happening so soon after a medical treatment. Furthermore, it would not be unreasonable for a healthy person to decide he would rather risk infection with the virus than suffer side-effects from an unproven vaccine. Not everyone has the good fortune to faint “into the arms of two nearby doctors” (as the fainting was described in the article). Some people break bones and sustain skull fractures. Some people have their adverse reaction after they leave the clinic and are driving home. Some have it months later.
After more than two years since vaccinations began, it should have been clear that, because the mRNA treatments were not as safe and effective as promised, no one should have ever been coerced into taking them. Their heavy promotion, backed by well-funded propaganda campaigns of half-truths and bold lies, was unethical, as was the gaslighting, shaming and shunning of the people who demanded bodily autonomy.
However, at this late date, after so much has been officially admitted about the adverse effects, including death, the author claimed that Tiffany’s story became a rallying point for those “who falsely believe that vaccines are killing and injuring people in droves.” (italics added) Those last two words were probably chosen carefully because without them one could not say they “falsely believe.” It is a fact that they are killing and injuring people, but “in droves” may be ambiguous enough to make the statement passable for a quibbling fact checker. The sentence is now “partially true” if one wants to see it that way.
One can denounce the campaign of coercion and still let Tiffany have her proclaimed “belief” in the vaccines. The issue that should be discussed is the failure of medical ethics in public policy that led to the vilification of people who had a different belief. They did not want to submit themselves to a medical therapy that had been rushed to market with no long-term safety data to support its use. Despite the facts, this issue remains utterly invisible to the writers who specialize in this genre.
The final thing to mention about this article is that, like the article in The Atlantic, it uses the devices of fiction. It focuses on the emotional and physical condition of the subject and thus leads the reader to an engagement with her story. Her eyes are “wide and bright and terribly blue.” They are described again at the end of the article as “electric blue.” The writer emphasizes this because a post-vaccination photo of her was not lit well and her eye color was not visible, and this is what set off rumors that it was not really her in the photo. Nonetheless, the descriptions are unnecessary embellishments. Readers don’t need to know her hair dye choices, either, but these too were described. This news article about a controversial pharmaceutical product could also be reported without the accompanying glamor photos of the very photogenic victim. There are, after all, less glamorous and less fortunate victims of vaccination who suffered fates worse than fainting (11). Tiffany is alive and healthy, and she did not refuse to be filmed on the day of her vaccination. This isn’t really about a story about her fainting and its aftermath, however. The purpose of this genre is the feint—the fake out and distraction from what the public should really be paying attention to.
Example 3: Minimization in Scientific Journal Articles
Let’s return to the scientific journal articles. Concluding statements in scientific papers are not always about objective findings. They are interpretations and opinions by the authors, and they often seem to go in the direction of minimizing the problems revealed by the study. It has always been standard practice for researchers to be humble about the impact of their work, for their conclusions may be disproven by subsequent research. Nonetheless, when it comes to any research related to Covid-19, excessive hesitancy and even fear are evident.
For some reason, the medical specialists authoring these papers never express alarm or suggest a halt to vaccination of individuals who are at low risk of suffering serious harm from the viral infection. Recall that the infectious mortality rate was found to be about 0.1%, more or less, depending on one’s age. It is this low for healthy individuals and higher for the elderly and the unhealthy. As mentioned above, the rate became lower as doctors learned how to treat the infection and abandoned dangerous interventions. Another factor was the virus itself becoming less deadly.
Readers might respond that I am ignoring the millions of cases of “long covid,” but my response is that there is no clinical definition for it, and it may be no different than the post-viral syndrome associated with influenza—a phenomenon which never aroused alarm in society before 2020. The alleged symptoms of long covid also overlap with adverse reactions to the vaccine, so if we must be concerned about long covid, we also have to object to the continued use of therapies that use the spike protein to induce immunity. Doctors are developing treatments for reactions to the spike protein, whether they came from the virus or the mRNA jabs. It is also likely that “long covid” is a side effect of “long type 2 diabetes” and various other chronic (i.e. long duration) illnesses that are the root causes of death by SARS-Cov-2.
The ritualistic minimization of vaccine injuries in the scientific reports is obviously an essential bow of fealty to the scientific priesthood. It is the modern equivalent of Galileo in the 17th century affirming the existence and greatness of God in order to, hopefully, have heliocentrism taken seriously. These researchers may feel privately that the matter is urgent, but they know that in order to shine any light on the issue in a respected medical journal, they will have to bow down to the official doctrine. They justify it as the only way to shine some light on the problem and change the system from within. If they really thought the matter was so trivial, they wouldn’t study it. Medical personnel could just treat their patients without worrying about the speculative role vaccines might have played in their illnesses. A doctor treating a cancer rarely worries about whether it was caused by fallout from nuclear weapons testing because identifying this cause would make no difference in the treatment. Her job is to treat the patient. However, in the late 1950s, some doctors saw a reason to speak out and create the political pressure that halted nuclear tests in the atmosphere in 1963.
The paper cited in the appendix below, to conclude this long essay, was chosen as an example of this minimization. It is concerned with liver diseases following vaccination. I found this one because recently I took note of the 15th mRNA-jabbed person in my social circles to suffer a severe health crisis since January 2021. In the two years before then, I knew of only one medical emergency among friends, family, and colleagues. In the 15th person’s case, it was a pyogenic liver abscess that put him in the ICU and almost killed him.
In studies like this that conclude by minimizing the problem, there is an obvious problem in saying the number of cases is “very small in relation to the hundreds of millions of vaccinations.” When one considers all of the research on adverse events in all other organ systems, one starts to think, as Yogi Berra said, “Little things are big.” Yogi Bear was smarter than the average bear, and Yogi Berra, the “dumb” sage of baseball legend, was, it seems, far smarter than the average immunologist. Little things do start to add up. One case of lymphoma, or fainting, or liver disease may seem insignificant when seen is isolation, but when all the adverse events are seen together from a distance, along with a sharp rise in all-cause mortality, we can start to ask the right questions (12). They are similar to the questions we should ask about the compounding effects of numerous environmental toxicants and pollutants humans are exposed to. One chemical might be declared safe at a certain exposure, but what is the combined effect of hundreds of such chemicals? It looks like the harms are extremely rare only when cases and types of injuries are studied in isolation and the victims are also kept isolated.
We could also add Yogi Berra’s other gems of wisdom that apply to the entire Covid phenomenon. When we find that not much has changed since Galileo’s time, recall that Yogi Berra said, “it’s like déjà vu all over again,” and when you think about all that has happened since March 2020, remember he said, “the future ain’t what it used to be.”
References
J.R. Barrio, “Consensus science and the peer review.” Molecular Imaging and Biology. April 2009, 11(5): 293. doi: 10.1007/s11307-009-0233-0. PMID: 19399558; PMCID: PMC2719747.
Louis Menand, “Crooked Psychics and Cooling the Mark Out,” The New Yorker, June 18, 2015. “The classic exposition of the practice of helping victims of a con adapt to their loss is the sociologist Erving Goffman’s 1952 article ‘On Cooling the Mark Out.’ … ‘After the blowoff has occurred,’ Goffman explained, about the operation of a con, ‘one of the operators stays with the mark and makes an effort to keep the anger of the mark within manageable and sensible proportions. The operator stays behind his team-mates in the capacity of what might be called a cooler and exercises upon the mark the art of consolation. An attempt is made to define the situation for the mark in a way that makes it easy for him to accept the inevitable and quietly go home. The mark is given instruction in the philosophy of taking a loss.’ What happened stays out of the paper.”
Angelo Maria Pezzullo, Cathrine Axfors, Despina G. Contopoulos-Ioannidis, Alexandre Apostolatos, John P.A. Ioannidis, “Age-stratified infection fatality rate of COVID-19 in the non-elderly informed from pre-vaccination national seroprevalence studies,” Environmental Research, January 2023. This study found that Covid-19’s infection fatality rate (IFR) by age was under 0.1% for those under 70. The breakdown by age was 0.0003% at 0-19 years, 0.003% at 20-29 years, 0.011% at 30-39 years, 0.035% at 40-49 years, 0.129% at 50-59 years, and 0.501% at 60-69 years.
S. Alhumaid et al., “New-onset and relapsed liver diseases following COVID-19 vaccination: a systematic review.” BMC Gastroenterology, October 2022; 22(1):433. doi: 10.1186/s12876-022-02507-3. PMID: 36229799; PMCID: PMC9559550. The abstract states, “Mortality was reported in any of the included cases.” Was the erroneous use of any in this sentence a typographical error or a deliberate ambiguity put into the abstract? There are three options for a correct interpretation: 1. Mortality wasnot reported inany of the included cases… 2. Mortality was reported in many of the included cases… 3. Mortality was reported in all of the included cases. It is difficult to know the authors’ intended meaning regarding this significant finding from their research. The sample sizes (six figures indicated as sample sizes, n=x) total 41 cases out of the 275 cases studied. This is a fatality rate of 15%, but it is difficult to know what the intended meaning of the 32 authors is, due to the ambiguity described above. One can conclude that any of, many of, all of, or not any of the authors read the abstract carefully before it went to press. In any case, even if there were no deaths, one could take issue with the statement that “patients were easily treated without any serious complications, recovered and did not require long-term hepatic therapy.” Many patients would not feel so optimistic about having had such damage inflicted on a vital organ which is, considering the contemporary food supply and environment, already exposed to enough harm.
It is important to note that this phenomenon has many precedents that occurred long before social media existed. The Dreyfus Affair (1890s) and the death of Azaria Chamberlain in Australia (1980) are just two examples one could refer to. The latter one was the butt of several jokes in poor taste broadcast on mainstream media outlets (referencing the apocryphal phrase “A dingo ate my baby!”) Back then, the incident was referred to benignly by the mass media as a regrettable “media circus.” The panic in the mainstream media about the new panics is interesting in the way it views professional journalism as beyond reproach and “participatory misinformation” as an urgent new threat posed by irresponsible, out-of-control social media platforms and a monstrous new type of people that apparently did not exist in the past.
Ed Dowd, “Cause Unknown”: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 & 2022 (Skyhorse, 2022). Website: https://www.theyliedpeopledied.com/: “Between March of 2021 and February of 2022, 61,000 millennials died excessively above the prior 5-year base trend line… The relative timespan and rate of change into the fall of 2021 is a signal that a harmful event occurred to this 25-44 age group. This means that millennials started dying in large numbers at the same times when vaccines and boosters were rolled out. The vaccine clearly had a role, as many previously hesitant folks were forced into compliance.” Or see Aubrey Marcus, “Why Are Healthy People Dying Suddenly Since 2021? w/ Ed Dowd,” January 5, 2023. (31:40~).
In the words of the WEF, “story-based media can shift social norms, values and beliefs more effectively than traditional, fact-based messaging”
When a story is based on a lie, it takes a significant effort to maintain that lie, and the tyrants work day and night to keep their lies “alive”
The definition of “normal” came from math, and its contemporary meaning was shaped by the father of eugenics and Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton
Today, there is an effort on the part of the “human parasites” to induce the condition of “arrested development” on as many people as they can
No matter the circumstance, it’s on us to stand tall
I would like to start with a stunning example of the World Economic Forum telling the truth. Here is factual quote by them from 2018:
“There is now a compelling body of evidence to support the idea that, with the right research and theoretical grounding, story-based media can shift social norms, values and beliefs more effectively than traditional, fact-based messaging [emphasis mine]. What is even more exciting is how digital technology is bringing compelling stories to millions of people at increasingly lower costs.”
Are they telling the truth? Yes, they are — and the past three years offer immediate proof. The story-based media, sponsored by their masters from BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, has shifted the social norms alright! Here is a scary SNL skit that — I think — was supposed to make somebody laugh. I don’t usually watch the SNL, and I didn’t laugh:
“Social Norms”
Why do the social norms exist? We are social creatures, and our communities have customs. We are wired from birth to look at what others are doing and compare notes. We are also wired to “adjust” our behavior depending on the reactions we get. In the traditional wilderness, most adults can’t survive without being mature and living by natural and spiritual laws. And even here and how, in the urban jungle, our basic survival may depend on how well and how quickly we “read the room.”
As it goes with most things in life though, human qualities that exist in us with the purpose of helping us survive and thrive, can be turned on their heads and abused. It is kind of like what the parasites in nature do when they take advantage of the instincts and various natural biological functions in their target host — and make those features work for themselves, to the detriment of the host.
Our love of being in harmony with our community can be abused, too — and it has been abused throughout centuries and in the past three years — by committing acts of mob-like terror to create the initial shock and lasting collective fear, and thus corrupting the “base line” — and then by enforcing “arrested development” and preventing children from emotionally growing up until they are ready to be consumed by the Machine.
Here is a fine bit of inverted storytelling for the child-like adults that is intended to make them feel “smart.”
See, a mature and soul-oriented adult can “read the room” and then intelligently choose what to, based on what’s spiritually sound to do under a circumstance. On the other hand, an individual who is not particularly mature or soul-oriented tends to react in a mechanical way. Such a person is usually easy to consume by the not-so-benevolent masters at the top.
Thus, the “mechanically reactive” mode of living is typical for those who are yet to find themselves: children and child-like adults. And the effort to induce the condition of “arrested development” on as many “worker ants” as possible is the ambition of the human parasites.
What Is “Normal,” Anyway?
Enter the notion of “normal.” Before we proceed, let us look at the history of the term.
“The word normal entered the English language in the mid-1840s, followed by normality in 1849, and normalcy in 1857 … When normal was first used it had nothing to do with people, or society, or human behavior. Norm and normal were Latin words used by mathematicians. Normal comes from the Latin word norma which refers to a carpenter’s square, or T-square. Building off the Latin, normal first meant “perpendicular” or “at right angles.”
Normal was first used outside a mathematical context in the mid-1800s by a group of men … in the academic disciplines of comparative anatomy and physiology. These two fields, by the 19th century, had professional dominion over the human body … They used the term “normal state” to describe functioning organs and other systems inside the body.
The anatomists and physiologists, however, never did find or define the normal state. Instead they studied and defined its opposite — the pathological state. They defined normal as what is not abnormal …
The idea of the average as normal goes way back to 1713 to a Swiss mathematician named Jakob Bernoulli, who many consider to be the founder of modern day calculus and statistics …
Bernoulli created an equation known as the calculus of probabilities, which became the foundation of all statistics … The calculus of probabilities specifically, and statistics generally, made many seemly random events more predictable …”
Then Adolphe Quetelet took the calculus of probabilities and “applied not to gambling but to human beings … Quetelet was a true believer that statistics should be applied to all aspects of society … In 1835, he put forth the concept of the ‘average man.’
His plan was to gather massive amounts of statistical data about any given population and calculate the mean, or most commonly occurring, of various sets of features — height, weight, eye color — and later, qualities such as intelligence and morality, and use this “average man” as a model for society …”
Anyone can smell eugenics in the air at this point? Quetelet “used regular, average, and normal interchangeably. In 1870, in a series of essays on ‘deformities’ in children, he juxtaposed children with disabilities to the normal proportions of other human bodies, which he calculated using averages. The normal and the average had merged.”
The formal “father” of normality (and eugenics), however, was Francis Galton, Charles Darwin’s cousin. Galton was an anthropologist and the founder of eugenics known for his “pioneering” (per Encyclopedia Britannica) studies of human intelligence. He started out as a doctor and then left medicine for the budding field of statistics. He was knighted in 1909.
Pet LitHub, “as Lennard Davis described in his book Enforcing Normalcy, Galton made significant changes in statistical theory that created the concept of the norm, as we know it. Galton was into the idea of improving the human race and believed that statistics could help. He loved Quetelet’s whole ‘average man’ thing but had one minor problem.
In the center of Quetelet’s bell curve were the most commonly occurring traits, not the ideal bodies and minds Galton believed everyone should have.”
“To solve this problem, Galton, through a complicated … mathematical process … took the bell curve idea, where the most common traits clustered in the middle and the extremes, and created what he called an ‘ogive’ … which, as Davis explains ‘is arranged in quartiles with an ascending curve that features the desired trait as “higher” than the undesirable “deviation.”
According to Peter Cryle and Elizabeth Stephens, authors of Normality: a Critical Genealogy, “Galton was not only the first person to develop a properly statistical theory of the normal … but also the first to suggest that it be applied as a practice of social and biological normalization.”
By the early twentieth century, the concept of a normal man took hold. The emerging field of public health loved it. Schools, with rows of desks and a one-size-fits-all approach to learning, were designed for the mythical middle.
The industrial economy needed standardization, which was brought about by the application of averages, standards, and norms to industrial production. Eugenics, an offshoot of genetics created by Galton, was committed to ridding the world of “defectives” … and was founded on the concept of the normal distribution curve.”
Eugenics
Gene Editing
Is “Gene Editing” the New Spelling of “Eugenics”?
Speaking of eugenics — I mean, gene editing — here is a TED talk by Paul Knoepfler, a mainstream researcher at UC Davis School of Medicine, from a few years ago. It is fascinating to watch. I say “fascinating” because I like to observe other people’s train of thought. And in some cases, people’s thinking is a wild mix of possible good intention, actual science, fantasy, and hubris (remember DDT?).
In his case, in 2018, he called for a temporary moratorium on “designer babies,” and then in 2020, at a time when nearly every mainstream scientist was compliant or trusty or both, he published a piece supporting mRNA vaccines. What is his opinion on the mRNA vaccines today? I don’t know. But since he still seemingly has a job, whatever his opinion is, he is probably keeping it to himself.
Even more fascinating is this bit of storytelling. In real life, the scientists — even the well-intended ones — who hope to “improve humanity” by genetic modification are more like a very ambitious elephant in the china shop than anything else. Perhaps they are an elephant who identifies as a very graceful ballerina — but they are an elephant, and no amount of fantasizing about genetic modification can change that.
But it is fascinating to watch propaganda videos. Words are cheap, anything can be said with great conviction, including blatant lies. There is even a flying car briefly making an appearance in this propaganda video! Perhaps, a hint?
When something is based on a lie, it takes a significant effort to maintain that lie. Because of that, for centuries, there have been very powerful lie-maintaining institutions in place. The people employed at the lie-maintaining institutions have been very skilled at the art of deceit, at the art of confusion, at the art of seduction, and at the art of fear.
The middle managers could be just foot soldiers, the apprentices of the Machine. They often have no idea what they are really doing, and they typically prefer not even think about ways to find an accurate mirror because they are not looking to shatter their own worldview.
The ones at the top though know exactly what they are doing, and they put a lot of work in maintaining their lies. They are in perpetual search of new victims and new ways to sell their lies. They are in perpetual search of new abuse markets, so to speak. And so they swap stories and marketing brochures without even blinking, as often as they need, to replenish their victim supply.
Cycle of Abuse and the Story of Superiority
It dawned on me: the way institutional abusers play “divide and conquer” and treat different groups of people differently is as if they were delivering the experiences of different phases of abuse to those groups at the same time.
The “temporarily elevated,” i.e. the demographic targeted to be temporary supporters and loyal soldiers of the dark ones, are shown the “honey moon” phase — while the ones who are targeted for immediate destruction, receive the unmasked boot, the phase of abuse when the gloves of the abuser are off.
Of course, both groups are targeted to be eaten, just at different times — and during Phase One, Group One is supposed to not know that they are enthusiastically digging not just the graves for Group Two, but also their own graves.
That makes perfect sense as far as the art of warfare goes. Seduction, including sugar-covered storytelling and some practical perks, is required to pull the victim in. It’s very important for the abuser to first pull some wool over the victim’s eyes and ears and some cotton candy over the victim’s mouth.
The ones who are targeted to be supporters, are told that they better, smarter, more handsome, and more spiritually righteous than the ones targeted to be food. What’s hidden from the “next phase” victims though is the fact that the abuse is on its way. Inevitably, on its way.
The Not-so-Great Reset
What’s really happening in regards to the not-so-great reset role swapping, a reshuffling in the game of the musical chairs. We in the West have gotten used to the role of “honey moon” people, the ones who are shown the “honey moon” phase. And who could blame us? It is easy to get used to good things. Hey, this Soviet expat is very grateful for those good things and got used to them right away!
And it is also true that for all practical purposes, while Phase One lasts, it is much better to belong to our “western” group. Big houses, big TVs, material abundance, freedom of expression — or at least relative freedom of expression — all those things have been sweet, and having them makes a dramatic difference in our quality of life. As someone who grew up at the tail end of the USSR, I passionately attest to that.
However, it is important to be honest. And for the sake of being honest, it is better to separate the underlying reality from “storytelling.” For example, we decry — rightfully so — the forced closure of places of worship during the COVID lockdowns. But how many people know that, for example, the original people of this land could not legally practice the spiritual traditions of their ancestors until 1978, when American Indian Religious Freedom Act was passed?
This reminds of a Soviet-era joke. A Russian and an American are having a conversation, and the American says: “We in America have freedom. For example, I can go up to the White House and say loudly, ‘Reagan sucks!” The Russian laughs and says, “Big deal. I, too, can go to Red Square and say loudly, ‘Reagan sucks!’”
Modus Propagandi
When the poorer and less socially elevated people are used as pawn in a coup, they are propagandized in a particular way — which is something that I observed in the Soviet Union, and something that I am observing, to my chagrin, in America today.
The dejected ones are handed a fake new “respect” and the satisfaction of “righteously” humiliating the ones who annoy them, in this case, the “privileged” folks. It is that game of musical chairs, the redistribution of the crumbles of respect, again.
From the standpoint of the dark individuals on top, it’s just another reiteration of “divide and conquer,” reshuffling of Phase One and Phase Two people and values, a matter of different groups of ants swapping roles. But it feels very serious to the dignified people on the ground for good reasons as we can feel our dignity just slipping away, the sound of propaganda of the day.
They Do It Again and Again
This topic is close to my heart. When the generation of my grandparents in the USSR found themselves on the receiving end of the not-so-great reset of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, the “foot soldiers of the Machine” were the poor ones, the compliant ones, and the village drunks.
This is not how I learned history at school, however. When I was a kid, I was told a story of horrible pre-1917 life and the Bolsheviks riding in on a white horse (like a Robin Hood, although I am not sure if Robin Hood had a white horse). It was later, gradually, that I figured out that it was just a story, and that it was a vicious lie.
Then when the Soviet Union fell apart, I was still a kid, and I remember how exciting and prestigious it was for anyone to be in any way involved with anything “from the West.” Glamorous things were: joint enterprises, foreigners, Western music, Western values, and this song.
What a sweet fairy tale it was. And despite the sweetness of that story, and the tremendously fond memories I have of those times, that, too, was just “storytelling.” In reality, it was a loveless market grab by the key investors in multinational companies. It was a social restructuring that for us, at that time, felt awesome because we, the people of the Soviet Union, were temporarily made to believe that were the benefiting group.
The “Russian Doll” of Lies: Letting Go
I have spent many years pondering this dynamic, and came to the conclusion that until we reject all fake stories — even the ones we imbibed with mother’s milk, even the ones that allow people like us to continue our comfortable slumber — we are not “safe” from being on the receiving end of the not-so-great reset.
That is a very tall order and a very tough spiritual and intellectual challenge even for the best of us, and it’s hard work. But our sweet freedom is worth all the hard work in the world, isn’t it? I think so.
About the Author
To find more of Tessa Lena’s work, be sure to check out her bio, Tessa Fights Robots.
Oct 14, 2020 • Last Updated 22 days ago • 4 minute read
A screenshot of a letter from the Nova Scotia government which was sent out to residents to warn about a pack of wolves on the loose in the province. The letter was actually a forgery by Canadian military personnel as part of a propaganda training mission.
Article content
A letter from the Nova Scotia government sent out to residents to warn about a pack of wolves on the loose in the province was forged by Canadian military personnel as part of a propaganda training mission that went off the rails.
The letter told residents to be wary of wolves that had been reintroduced into the area by the provincial and federal governments and warned the animals were now roaming the Annapolis Valley. The letter, which later became public, sparked concern and questions among residents but was later branded as “fake” by the Nova Scotia government which didn’t know the military was behind the deception.
The training also involved using a loudspeaker to generate wolf sounds, the Canadian Forces confirmed to this newspaper.
The fake letter was part of new skills being tested by the military as it hones its expertise for launching propaganda missions at home and abroad. The letter was developed by information warfare specialists with the Halifax Rifles, a reserve unit.
They not only forged the logo of the Wildlife Division of Nova Scotia’s Department of Lands and Forestry but they also attributed the letter to a real Nova Scotia government employee, even though they didn’t have permission to do so. A phone number on the letter, which residents were to call if they had concerns about the wolves, was traced by this newspaper to the work number of an Environment Canada employee, who also appears to be a Canadian Forces reservist.
The Canadian Forces revealed its role behind the fake letter last week to the Nova Scotia government and then on the weekend to local news media. Media outlets reported military staff had written the letter but didn’t know why.
Emma Briant, a professor at Bard College in the U.S. who specializes in researching military propaganda, said what the Canadian Forces did was a major violation of ethics. “This is way over the top,” Briant said. “It’s a very dangerous path when you start targeting your own public with false information and trying to manipulate them.”
Briant said the deception has nothing to do with wolves; it was likely an exercise in the testing the military’s skills in trying to manipulate the population with false information. “You start a rumour about wolves on the loose and then you see how the public reacts,” she added.
Similar deception operations were tried by contractors of SCL, a propaganda company which had worked for the U.S. and British militaries in Afghanistan and other locations in Asia. In those cases, false information was transmitted to villagers to convince them not to send their children to religious schools where they might be radicalized. But instead of being truthful, the contractors concocted an information campaign claiming pedophiles were operating in religious schools and parents shouldn’t send them there because their children would be in danger of being molested.
Department of National Defence spokesman Dan Le Bouthillier said the fake letter wasn’t meant to be released to the public and an investigation is underway to determine how that happened. The letter was an aid for the propaganda training. Le Bouthillier said he didn’t know why the loudspeaker was set up to transmit wolf sounds and that will be investigated as well.
The training initiative did not follow the established approval process and was not okayed by senior leaders, he added.
The Nova Scotia propaganda training comes as the Canadian Forces spools up its capabilities to conduct information warfare, influence operations and other deception missions aimed at populations overseas and, if necessary, the Canadian public.
Briant revealed on Monday the Canadian Forces spent more than $1 million in training its public affairs officers in skills to influence targeted populations.
In July, this newspaper reported a team assigned to a Canadian military intelligence unit monitored and collected information from people’s social media accounts in Ontario, claiming such data-mining was needed to help troops working in long-term care homes during the coronavirus pandemic. The collection involved comments made by the public about the provincial government’s failure in taking care of the elderly in the province. That data was turned over to the Ontario government, with a warning from the team it represented a “negative” reaction from the public.
This newspaper reported at the same time that the Canadian Forces planned a propaganda campaign aimed at heading off civil disobedience by Canadians during the coronavirus pandemic. The plan used similar propaganda tactics to those employed against the Afghan population during the war in Afghanistan, including loudspeaker trucks to transmit government messages. The propaganda operation was never put into action.
In addition, some Canadian military officers have suggested creating fake Facebook and other social media accounts for carrying out deception operations as well as harnessing social media accounts of Canadian Forces members, military-friendly academics and retired senior military staff to challenge opposition politicians and journalists who raise controversial issues regarding the Canadian Forces.
The Canadian Forces stresses that it follows ethical guidelines in its propaganda operations.
But others inside the military say that isn’t the case, pointing to the Nova Scotia operation as a prime example as it violated Canadian privacy law and the Criminal Code when soldiers forged documents.
The fake wolf letter was dated Sept. 19, two days after Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jon Vance met with senior military leaders to explain “the value of ethical decision making and the importance of maintaining the credibility of the CAF by being honest and transparent in everything we do.”
I wish it were not so, but most human beings seem incapable of critical thought regarding how history follows a cyclical path due to human nature retaining its flaws, weaknesses, vulnerabilities and fortes throughout history. We believe we have advanced because our inventions, discoveries, and technology, but the desire for wealth, power and control over others still consumes a sociopathic portion of mankind who tend to rise to the top through any means necessary.
As Huxley lamented in the 1950’s, technological progress has actually propelled mankind backwards in terms of its humanity and relationship with nature and other human beings. The very technology we glorify as an example of our advancement is now being used by the totalitarians to imprison us. It has happened slowly and methodically over decades as generation after generation have entered the government indoctrination centers (public schools) to be taught ignorance and obedience to the state. This indoctrination has been reinforced by ceaseless propaganda injected into their brains by media conglomerates doing the bidding of the state.
The dystopian use of disinformation, false narratives, blatant lies and propaganda by the totalitarians constituting the Deep State, as their never-ending coup attempt against a duly elected president attests, will be the catalyst for the next vicious phase of this Fourth Turning. For the last four years the Russiagate coup has dogged Trump, as Obama, Clinton, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Mueller and a myriad of lesser co-conspirators have propagated the Big Lie to cover-up their traitorous actions of trying to overthrow Trump.
An honest truth-seeking press with unbiased journalists would have uncovered this conspiracy and revealed the truthful facts to a concerned public. Instead, a completely captured corporate media has turned a blind eye to the truth as they have acted as accomplices of the coup culprits. Just as evil is the suppression of truth through censorship and keeping silent regarding the truth. Huxley understood how totalitarian propagandists operated decades before the current batch of Silicon Valley authoritarians initiated their national truth repression scheme.
“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects… totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.” – Aldous Huxley
A perfect example of this is my local ABC news affiliate doing an hour long broadcast last night with absolutely no mention of the Hunter Biden – Joe Biden pay for play scandal. The truth dies in silence. The left-wing media dominated by six mega-corporations and social media billionaire titans (Bezos, Zuckerberg, Dorsey) have colluded with other left wing billionaires (Soros, Bloomberg) and the traitorous Deep Staters (Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Clinton) to bring down a sitting president and now to memory hole proof of Joe Biden corruption and his son’s illegal dealings with foreign enemies.
These anti-rational propagandists are enemies of freedom, as they systematically pervert reality and knowingly manipulate the minds of the masses towards how they require them to think, feel and act. After years of socialist indoctrination in government schools and universities, the masses have been taught to feel rather than think. Victimhood is celebrated, while personal responsibility is scorned.
The truth has been revealed, to those capable of critical thinking since the onset of this engineered pandemic fear exercise in March 2020. We have segued from the soft tyranny of Huxley’s Brave New World towards the harsh tyranny of Orwell’s 1984. As the leftist oligarchs have unleashed their ANTIFA and BLM terrorists in cities across America in “mostly peaceful protests”, as proclaimed by the Big Brother media, ignorance is strength rings true across our dystopian landscape.
I’m amazed by the extreme level of ignorance exhibited by a vast swath of our population, as they glory in believing comforting mistruths which confirm their preordained belief structure. They don’t know because they don’t want to know. They are intoxicated by the endless stream of idiocy emanating from their iGadgets, as they willfully choose ignorance over awareness, servitude over freedom, and captivity over liberty.
As Huxley predicted, the controlling oligarchy has used technology to convince people to love their servitude, while unthinkingly believing what they are told by their government and media mouthpieces, doing the bidding of the government and oligarchs who control the government. The goal of the ruling class is to keep people from thinking, and most willingly oblige because thinking is hard and the uncomfortable truths are too much to bear for the satiated masses.
But there is a minority who want the truth and are willing and able to deal with the consequences. They realize facts don’t cease to exist because we ignore them. (emphasis added) Facts don’t care about your beliefs or feelings. Facts lead you to the truth. And the immense coverup of facts over the last ten months as we approach this historically important election boggles the mind of every critical thinking person on the planet.
This clearly coordinated effort to mislead the public regarding our dire financial plight, the truth about this overblown flu, the true facts about the Russiagate coup attempt against Trump, and now the massive Joe Biden/Hunter Biden corruption scandal coverup, has taken on a new level of malevolence and deceitfulness. The duplicitous nature of the measures taken by the social media tyrants to control the narrative and dictate what the people must believe will climax in a violent response by those unwilling to accept their plot to overthrow the government and shredding of the U.S. Constitution.
In today’s episode of COVID fakery on rye and hold the apocalypse, we begin with a bevy of quotes from Edward Bernays (1891-1995), the acknowledged father of modern public relations, aka propaganda. I include his statements as a warm-up backgrounder—
“This is an age of mass production. In the mass production of materials a broad technique has been developed and applied to their distribution. In this age, too, there must be a technique for the mass distribution of ideas.” (1928)
“The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest.” (1947)
“It is sometimes possible to change the attitudes of millions but impossible to change the attitude of one man.” (date unknown)
“When I came back to the United States, I decided that if you could use propaganda for war, you could certainly use it for peace. And ‘propaganda’ got to be a bad word because of the Germans using it, so what I did was to try and find some other words. So we found the words ‘counsel on public relations’.” (date unknown)
“When Napoleon said, ‘Circumstance? I make circumstance‚’ he expressed very nearly the spirit of the public relations counsel’s work.” (1923)
“Domination to-day is not a product of armies or navies or wealth or policies. It is a domination based on the one hand upon accomplished unity, and on the other hand upon the fact that opposition is generally characterized by a high degree of disunity.” (1923)
“The public relations counsel, therefore, is a creator of news for whatever medium he chooses to transmit ideas. It is his duty to create news no matter what the medium which broadcasts this news.” (1923)
“The only difference between ‘propaganda’ and ‘education,’ really, is in the point of view. The advocacy of what we believe in is education. The advocacy of what we don’t believe in is propaganda.” (1923)
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.” (1928)
“Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.” (1928)
“If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway. But men do not need to be actually gathered together in a public meeting or in a street riot, to be subject to the influences of mass psychology. Because man is by nature gregarious he feels himself to be member of a herd, even when he is alone in his room with the curtains drawn. His mind retains the patterns which have been stamped on it by the group influences.” (1928)
The news heads and the talk show heads and the sports heads and the advertisers and bureaucrats and politicians and public health flacks and celebrities are assuring television viewers, with no shame: We’re all in this together. Over and over. Night and day. On every channel.
This was the strategy during older wars. No time for disagreement or dissent; there must be a unified response and effort; otherwise, we could lose.
We’re all in this together means: fall in line.
If that’s share and care and love, it’s robot love.
Advertisers, despite their studies and their sophistication and their wall-to-wall profiling of consumers, still believe in the first principle of propaganda: repetition.
Get the name of your product and company out there and don’t stop. Do it a thousand times, a million times. As long as you have money to pay for ads, do it.
Look at the insurance company commercials. Progressive, State Farm, Liberty, Geico. The little vignettes they lay on are really the occasion for pasting their company name on the screen. Make these 30-second stories friendly and funny and crazy, but the money shot is the company name.
Pandemic ads and messages follow the same rule. In this case, it’s TOGETHERNESS. UNITY. Pounded on and on.
Why? If cooperation and love and togetherness are basic human impulses, why do people need to be reminded of that 24 hours a day, on television?
Does a husband who loves his wife need to see his face and his wife’s face on a screen, on every channel, without let-up, along with a message urging him to adore her?
On the other hand, a person who’s been thrown out of a job, who can’t find work, who sees his government checks fading down to zero…he needs pacification. That’s a tough sell. That sell-job requires a whole lot of repetition…
…In order to produce SHAME in him, if he feels cheated and exiled and screwed. The repetition of togetherness and fake love informs him that the collective citizenry isn’t on his side. It tells him his righteous anger has no place in the relentlessly upbeat messaging of “unity.” It keeps him feeling isolated.
Now we’re getting down to it. Don’t let the people who are economically devastated believe they can find each other. Shut them out. Pump them full of television public service ads that paint an “uplifting” picture from which they’re excluded.
They may be devastated, but television tells them they aren’t on the team if they give their own concerns first priority. If they do, they’re non-persons.
After all, when they sit at home watching TV, do they see a cropped video of another unemployed worker sitting in a dark room saying, “THIS IS CRAZY. I WANT TO WORK. I NEED FOOD. MY BOSS CLOSED HIS COMPANY. HE’S BANKRUPT. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?”
Are they offered that kind of unity? Togetherness?
“Hi. I’m an NFL cornerback. I’ve made thirty million during my career. Here I am at home with my kids. We’re playing games on the floor. I’m enjoying my family. We’ll get through this. All of us. Stay safe. Use the time to bring your family closer together.”
Major news outlets are under strict orders to keep “disturbing human interest stories” off the front page and away from their broadcasts. This is also part and parcel of the wartime effort.
It would have to be, since economic devastation is what this fake pandemic is actually all about. No one in the mainstream will let that cat out of the bag. It would be more than a mistake. It would be a confession. It would be suicide.
How about these headlines? VACCINE KINGS WANT TO SOFTEN UP POPULATIONS FOR A NEEDLE IN THE ARM. A RUINED POPULACE IS READY TO BE LED INTO A NEW WORLD ORDER.
Propagandists know that a one-two punch of fear and then assurance works. Scare them with the virus, comfort them with togetherness.
But still, it’s a tough sell. It has legs for a while, but then the natives become restless, especially in the hinterlands. People who aren’t jammed together in big cities, who live in open spaces, tend to develop immunity to lies. Coiffed press hookers on television dispensing so-called news carry less punch. Farmers know if they can’t plant their crops on time, with workers side by side, they’ll go broke.
Generally speaking, people who don’t see other people who are sick, and don’t hear ambulance sirens, start wondering what’s happening.
Protests begin. Protests expand.
The fake night of obedience turns into the real day of rebellion.
It turns out that a story about an invisible virus isn’t quite the same as a line of enemy tanks approaching. All promoted wars are not equal.
Fauci knows this. Birx knows this. Bill Gates knows this. Mayors and governors know this. The CDC and WHO know this. They don’t really care whether you survive, but they know you care. So, for them, it’s a race against time. How long can they keep the lid on? How long can their preposterous messaging work?
Stage magic is an odd game. The performer has to run his tricks quickly, so people don’t have the luxury of sitting back and thinking about how he is fooling them. However, the public health magicians and the politician magicians and the news magicians are hemmed in—they’re basically one-trick ponies. Virus, virus, virus=together, together, together.
It looks good, but it wears out.
It’s wearing out now.
I’ll close this piece with a few more gems from Edward Bernays—to urge you to keep your eye on the ball. The real ball.
“If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it?” (1928)
“A single factory, potentially capable of supplying a whole continent with its particular product, cannot afford to wait until the public asks for its product; it must maintain constant touch, through advertising and propaganda, with the vast public in order to assure itself the continuous demand which alone will make its costly plant profitable. This entails a vastly more complex system of distribution than formerly.” (1928)
“No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea. The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and clichés and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders.” (1928)
“Propaganda is of no use to the politician unless he has something to say which the public, consciously or unconsciously, wants to hear.” (1928)
Government trolls. Disinformation shills. Call them what you want, they are real.
Every day at WuW, we see “comments” submitted on our articles that are blatantly composed by trolls. Lengthy, well written comments designed to steer the conversation in a pro-government, pro-status quo direction. They pose as readers and first-time commenters, but post essay length commentary quoting “expert” government research on a range of topics, question those who question the government line, and urge us to believe in the path chosen for us by our trusted leaders. If we believe them, everything is and has always been ok. No further questions need to be asked. Those who do are paranoid.
Site moderation is something we take very seriously at WuW. We offer a platform for different voices and opinions to be expressed, and it is therefore quite rare that we suppress a reader’s comment from being posted on the site. But we’re not stupid, and we won’t let our site be undermined. We know government trolls and paid disinformation shills are real, and we can pick their work a mile away. It has a certain… quality. And they prove us right! The troll comments we supress are often re-submitted, again and again, word for word, from a variety of reader aliases and email addresses.
Like I said… we’re not stupid.
This is the story of a man who, due to economically hard times, accepted a job as an internet disinformation shill. After only 6 months, he resigned. He was no longer was able to look himself in the mirror.
…..I am writing here (ATS Forum) to come out of the closet as a paid shill. For a little over six months, I was paid to spread disinformation and argue political points on the Internet. ATS was NOT one that I was assigned to post on, although other people in the same organization were paid to be here, and I assume they still walk among you. But more on this later.
I quit this job in the latter part of 2011, because I became disgusted with it, and with myself. I realized I couldn’t look myself in the mirror anymore. If this confession triggers some kind of retribution against me, so be it. Part of being a real man in this world is having real values that you stand up for, no matter what the consequences.
My story begins in early 2011. I had been out of work for almost a year after losing my last job in tech support. Increasingly desperate and despondent, I jumped at the chance when a former co-worker called me up and said she had a possible lead for me. “It is an unusual job, and one that requires secrecy. But the pay is good. And I know you are a good writer, so its something you are suited for.” (Writing has always been a hobby for me). She gave me only a phone-number and an address, in one of the seedier parts of San Francisco, where I live. intrigued, I asked her for the company’s URL and some more info. She laughed. “They don’t have a website. Or even a name. You’ll see. Just tell them I referred you.” Yes, it sounded suspicious, but long-term joblessness breeds desperation, and desperation has a funny way of overlooking the suspicious when it comes to putting food on the table.
The next day, I arrived at the address – the third floor in a crumbling building. The appearance of the place did not inspire confidence. After walking down a long, filthy linoleum-covered corridor lit by dimly-flickering halogen, I came to the entrance of the office itself: a crudely battered metal door with a sign that said “United Amalgamated Industries, Inc.” I later learned that this “company” changed its name almost monthly, always using bland names like that which gave no strong impression of what the company actually does. Not too hopeful, I went inside. The interior was equally shabby. There were a few long tables with folding chairs, at which about a dozen people were tapping away on old, beat-up computers. There were no decorations or ornaments of any type: not even the standard-issue office fica trees or plastic ferns. What a dump. Well, beggars can’t be choosers.
The manager, a balding man in his late forties, rose from the only stand-alone desk in the room and came forward with an easy smile. “You must be Chris. Yvette [my ex-co-worker] told me you’d be coming.” [Not our real names]. “Welcome. Let me tell you a little about what we do.” No interview, nothing. I later learned they took people based solely on referral, and that the people making the referrals, like my ex-colleague Yvette, were trained to pick out candidates based on several factors including ability to keep one’s mouth shut, basic writing skills, and desperation for work.
We sat down at his desk and he began by asking me a few questions about myself and my background, including my political views (which were basically non-existent). Then he began to explain the job. “We work on influencing people’s opinions here,” is how he described it. The company’s clients paid them to post on Internet message boards and popular chartrooms, as well as in gaming forums and social networks like Facebook and MySpace. Who were these clients? “Oh, various people,” he said vaguely. “Sometimes private companies, sometimes political groups.” Satisfied that my political views were not strong, he said I would be assigned to political work. “The best people for this type of job are people like you, without strong views,” he said with a laugh. “It might seem counterintuitive, but actually we’ve found that to be the case.” Well, OK. Fine. As long as it comes with a steady paycheck, I’d believe whatever they wanted me to believe, as the guy in Ghostbusters said.
After discussing pay (which was much better than I’d hoped) and a few other details, he then went over the need for absolute privacy and secrecy. “You can’t tell anyone what we do here. Not your wife, not your dog.” (I have neither, as it happens.) “We’ll give you a cover story and even a phone number and a fake website you can use. You will have to tell people you are a consultant. Since your background is in tech support, that will be your cover job. Is this going to be a problem for you?” I assured him it would not. “Well, OK. Shall we get started?”
“Right now?” I asked, a bit taken aback.
“No time like the present!” he said with a hearty laugh.
The rest of the day was taken up with training. Another staff member, a no-nonsense woman in her thirties, was to be my trainer, and training would only last two days. “You seem like a bright guy, you’ll get the hang of it pretty fast, I think,” she said. And indeed, the job was easier than I’d imagined. My task was simple: I would be assigned to four different websites, with the goal of entering certain discussions and promoting a certain view. I learned later that some of the personnel were assigned to internet message boards (like me), while others worked on Facebook or chat rooms It seems these three types of media each have different strategy for shilling, and each shill concentrates on one of the three in particular.
My task? “To support Israel and counter anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic posters.” Fine with me. I had no opinions one way or another about Israel, and who likes anti-Semites and Nazis? Not me, anyway. But I didn’t know too much about the topic. “That’s OK,” she said. “You’ll pick it up as you go along. For the most part, at first, you will be doing what we call “meme-patrol.” This is pretty easy. Later if you show promise, we’ll train you for more complex arguments, where more in-depth knowledge is necessary.”
She handed me two binders with sheets enclosed in limp plastic. The first was labeled simply “Israel” in magic-marker on the cover, and it had two sections .The first section contained basic background info on the topic. I would have to read and memorize some of this, as time went on. It had internet links for further reading, essays and talking points, and excerpts from some history books. The second, and larger, section was called “Strat” (short for “strategy”) with long lists of “dialogue pairs.” These were specific responses to specific postings. If a poster wrote something close to “X,” we were supposed to respond with something close to “Y.” “You have to mix it up a bit, though,” said my trainer. “Otherwise it gets too obvious. Learn to use a thesaurus.” This section also contained a number of hints for de-railing conversations that went too far away from what we were attempting. These strategies included various forms of personal attacks, complaining to the forum moderators, smearing the characters of our opponents, using images and icons effectively, and even dragging the tone of the conversation down with sexual innuendo, links to pornography, or other such things. “Sometimes we have to fight dirty,” or trainer told us. “Our opponents don’t hesitate to, so we can’t either.”
The second binder was smaller, and it contained information specific to the web sites I would be assigned to. The sites I would work were: Godlike Productions, Lunatic Outpost, CNN news, Yahoo News, and a handful of smaller sites that rotated depending on need. As stated, I was NOT assigned to work ATS (although others in my group were), which is part of the reason I am posting this here, rather than elsewhere. I wanted to post this on Godlike Productions at first, but they have banned me from even viewing that site for some reason (perhaps they are onto me?). But if somebody connected with this site can get the message to them, I think they should know about it, because that was the site I spent a good 70% of my time working on.
The site-specific info in the second binder included a brief history each site, including recent flame-wars, as well as info on what to avoid on each site so as not to get banned. It also had quite detailed info on the moderators and the most popular regged posters on each site: location (if known), personality type, topics of interest, background sketch, and even some notes on how to “push the psychological buttons” of different posters. Although I didn’t work for ATS, I did see they had a lot of info on your so-called “WATS” posters here (the ones with gold borders around their edges). “Focus on the popular posters,” my trainer told me. “These are the influential ones. Each of these is worth 50 to 100 of the lesser known names.” Each popular poster was classified as “hostile,” “friendly,” or “indifferent” to my goal. We were supposed to cultivate friendship with the friendly posters as well as the mods (basically, by brown nosing and sucking up), and there were even notes on strategies for dealing with specific hostile posters. The info was pretty detailed, but not perfect in every case. “If you can convert one of the hostile posters from the enemy side to our side, you get a nice bonus. But this doesn’t happen too often, sadly. So mostly you’ll be attacking them and trying to smear them.”
At first, like I said, my job was “meme-patrol.” This was pretty simple and repetitive; it involved countering memes and introducing new memes, and didn’t demand much in-depth knowledge of the subject. Mostly just repetitive posting based on the dialogue pairs in the “Strat” section of the first binder. A lot of my job was de-railing and spamming threads that didn’t go our way, or making accusations of racism and anti-Semitism. Sometimes I had to simply lie and claim a poster said something or did something “in another thread” they really hadn’t said or done I felt bad about this…but in the end I felt worse about the possibility of losing the first job I’d been able to get since losing my “real” job.
The funny thing was, although I started the job with no strong opinions or political views, after a few weeks of this I became very emotionally wedded to the pro-Israel ideas I was pushing. There must be some psychological factor at work…a good salesman learns to honestly love the products he’s selling, I guess. It wasn’t long before my responses became fiery and passionate, and I began to learn more about the topic on my own. “This is a good sign,” my trainer told me. “It means you are ready for the next step: complex debate.”
The “complex debate” part of the job involved a fair amount of additional training, including memorizing more specific information about the specific posters (friendly and hostile) I’d be sparring with. Here, too, there were scripts and suggested lines of argument, but we were given more freedom. There were a lot of details to this more advanced stage of the job – everything from how to select the right avatar to how to use “demotivationals” (humorous images with black borders that one finds floating around the web). Even the proper use of images of cats was discussed. Sometimes we used faked or photo-shopped images or doctored news reports (something else that bothered me).
I was also given the job of tying to find new recruits, people “like me” who had the personality type, ability to keep a secret, basic writing/thinking skills, and desperation necessary to sign on a shill. I was less successful at this part of the job, though, and I couldn’t find another in the time I was there.
After a while of doing this, I started to feel bad. Not because of the views I was pushing (as I said, I was first apolitical, then pro-Israel), but because of the dishonesty involved. If my arguments were so correct, I wondered, why did we have to do this in the first place? Shouldn’t truth propagate itself naturally, rather than through, well…propaganda? And who was behind this whole operation, anyway? Who was signing my paychecks? The stress of lying to my parents and friends about being a “consultant” was also getting to me. Finally, I said enough was enough. I quit in September 2011. Since then I’ve been working a series of unglamorous temp office jobs for lower pay. But at least I’m not making my living lying and heckling people who come online to express their views and exercise freedom of speech.
A few days ago I happened to be in the same neighborhood and on a whim thought I’d check out the old office. It turns out the operation is gone, having moved on. This, too, I understood, is part of their strategy: Don’t stay in the same place for too long, don’t keep the same name too long, move on after half a year or so. Keeping a low profile, finding new employees through word of mouth: All this is part of the shill way of life. But it is a deceptive way of life, and no matter how noble the goals (I remain pro-Israel, by the way), these sleazy means cannot be justified by the end.
This is my confession. I haven’t made up my mind yet about whether I want to talk more about this, so if I don’t respond to this thread, don’t be angry. But I think you should know: Shills exist. They are real. They walk among you, and they pay special attention to your popular gold-bordered WATS posters. You should be aware of this. What you choose to do with this awareness is up to you.
